A Contrastive Genre Analysis Of English Abstracts In Land Science Dissertations By Chinese And American PhDs

In recent years, there have been more and more studies on academic thesisfrom the perspective of genre analysis in the field of linguistics. Genre analysishas been employed in investigating written discourse in academic theses.Nevertheless, a review of relevant previous genre studies indicates that there havebeen few genre researches on abstracts of PhD thesis, let alone on the genericstructure of thesis abstracts in land science written by Chinese PhD students.Therefore, The present study attempts to establish generic structural potential(GSP) of abstracts in land science dissertations and then compare it with theprevious researcher-Yu Hui’s GSP model of linguistics abstracts by examiningdifferences and similarities between the generic structures of abstracts written byAmerican and Chinese PhDs.The main purpose of this thesis was to generate the generic structuralpotential of abstracts in land science dissertations though analyzing50abstractsin land science dissertations by American PhDs from University of California,University of Florida, University of Illinois, Purdue University; Besides, based onthe new GSP for abstracts in land science dissertations, it examined whether YuHui’s GSP of linguistics abstracts can be applied to abstracts in land sciencedissertations and revealed problems existing in abstracts in land sciencedissertations by Chinese PhDs.First, the author established generic structural potential(GSP) on previousresearchers’ models for abstracts by investigating the generic structures of the50abstracts in land science dissertations by American PhDs. Further, the authorcarried out the structural analysis of another50abstracts by Chinese PhDs fromRenmin University of China, China Agricultural University and China University of Geosciences(Beijing). After comparing with the new GSP generated fromAmerican abstracts, it revealed several differences in abstracts in land sciencedissertations written by Chinese PhDs. Finally, the present study providedsuggestions for further research.We hope that the findings of this research have some pedagogicalimplications for English for General Purposes, especially for English for SpecificPurposes. Besides, the author also hope that more studies on academic paper ofother disciplines can appear on this issue in the future.